Thursday, January 25, 2018

Reading List: Artemis

Seldom has a first-time novelist burst onto the scene so
spectacularly as Andy Weir with
The Martian (November 2014).
Originally written for his own amusement and circulated
chapter by chapter to a small but enthusiastic group of
fans who provided feedback and suggestions as the story
developed, he posted the completed
novel as a free download on his Web site. Some people who
had heard of it by word of mouth but lacked the technical
savvy to download documents and transfer them to
E-readers inquired whether he could make a Kindle version
available. Since you can't give away Kindle books, he
published it at the minimum possible price. Before long, the
book was rising into the Amazon bestseller list in science fiction,
and he was contacted by a major publisher about doing a print
edition. These publishers only accept manuscripts through
agents, and he didn't have one (nor do agents usually work
with first-time authors, which creates a chicken-and-egg problem
for the legacy publishing industry), so the publisher put him
in touch with a major agent and recommended the manuscript.
This led to a 2014 hardcover edition and then a
Hollywood movie
in 2016 which was nominated for 7 Oscars and won two
Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture and Best Performance
by an Actor in its category.

The question fans immediately asked themselves was, “Is
this a one shot, or can he repeat?” Well, I think
we have the answer: with Artemis, Andy Weir has
delivered another story of grand master calibre and shown
himself on track to join the ranks of the legends of the
genre.

In the latter part of the 21st century commerce is expanding
into space, and the Moon is home to Artemis, a small settlement
of around 2000 permanent residents, situated in the southern
part of the Sea of Tranquility, around 40 km from the Apollo 11
landing site. A substantial part of the economy of Artemis is
based upon wealthy tourists who take the train from Artemis to
the Apollo 11 Visitor Center (where they can look, but not touch
or interfere with the historical relics) and enjoy the luxuries
and recreations which cater to them back in the pleasure domes.

Artemis is the creation of the Kenya Space Corporation (KSC), which
officially designates it “Kenya Offshore Platform
Artemis” and operates under international maritime law.
As space commerce burgeoned in the 21st century, Kenya's visionary
finance minister, Fidelis Ngugi, leveraged Kenya's equatorial
latitude (it's little appreciated that once reliable
fully-reusable launch vehicles are developed, there's no need to
launch over water) and hands-off regulatory regime provided a
golden opportunity for space entrepreneurs to escape the
nanny state regulation and crushing tax burden of “developed”
countries. With tax breaks and an African approach to
regulation, entrepreneurs and money flowed in from around
the world, making Kenya into a space superpower and
enriching its economy and opportunities for its people. Twenty
years later Ngugi was Administrator of Artemis; she was, in
effect, ruler of the Moon.

While Artemis was a five star experience for the tourists which
kept its economy humming, those who supported the settlement
and its industries lived in something more like a frontier
boom town of the 19th century. Like many such settlements,
Artemis attracted opportunity-seekers and those looking to
put their pasts behind them from many countries and cultures.
Those established tend to attract more like them, and
clannish communities developed around occupations: most
people in Life Support were Vietnamese, while metal-working
was predominantly Hungarian. For whatever reason, welding
was dominated by Saudis, including Ammar Bashara, who emigrated
to Artemis with his six-year old daughter Jasmine. Twenty
years later, Ammar runs a prosperous welding business and
Jasmine (“Jazz”) is, shall we say, more
irregularly employed.

Artemis is an “energy intense” Moon settlement of
the kind described in Steven D. Howe's Honor
Bound Honor Born (May 2014). The community is
powered by twin 27 megawatt nuclear reactors located behind a
berm one kilometre from the main settlement. The reactors not only
provide constant electricity and heat through the two week nights
and days of the Moon, they power a smelter which processes
the lunar regolith into raw materials. The Moon's crust is about
40% oxygen, 20% silicon, 12% iron, and 8% aluminium. With abundant
power, these elements can be separated and used to manufacture
aluminium and iron for structures, glass from silicon and
oxygen, and all with abundant left-over oxygen to breathe.
There is no need for elaborate recycling of oxygen: there's
always plenty more coming out of the smelter. Many denizens
of Artemis subsist largely on “gunk”, an algae-based
food grown locally in vats which is nutritious but
unpalatable and monotonous. There are a variety of flavours,
all of which are worse than the straight stuff.

Jazz works as a porter. She picks up things somewhere in
the settlement and delivers them to their destinations using her
personally-owned electric-powered cart. Despite the indigenous
production of raw materials, many manufactured goods and substances
are imported from Earth or factories in Earth orbit, and every time
a cargo ship arrives, business is brisk for Jasmine and her
fellow porters. Jazz is enterprising and creative, and
has a lucrative business on the side: smuggling. Knowing the
right people in the spaceport and how much to cut them in,
she has a select clientele to which she provides luxury goods
from Earth which aren't on the approved customs manifests.

For this, she is paid in “slugs”. No, not slimy
molluscs, but “soft-landed grams”, credits which can
be exchanged to pay KSC to deliver payload from Earth to Artemis.
Slugs act as a currency, and can be privately exchanged among individuals'
handheld computers much as Bitcoin today. Jazz makes around 12,000
slugs a month as a porter, and more, although variable, from her
more entrepreneurial sideline.

One of her ultra-wealthy clients approaches her with a highly
illegal, almost certainly unethical, and very likely perilous
proposal. Surviving for as long as she has in her risky business
has given Jazz a sense for where the edge is and the good sense
not to step over it.

“I'm sorry but this isn't my thing. You'll have to
find someone else.”

“I'll offer you a million slugs.”

“Deal.”

Thus begins an adventure in which Jazz has to summon all of
her formidable intellect, cunning, and resources, form
expedient alliances with unlikely parties, solve a
technological mystery, balance honour with being a outlaw,
and discover the economic foundation of Artemis, which is
nothing like it appears from the surface. All of this is set
in a richly textured and believable world which we learn about
as the story unfolds: Weir is a master of “show, don't
tell”. And it isn't just a page-turning thriller
(although that it most certainly is); it's also funny,
and in the right places and amount.

This is where I'd usually mention technical goofs and quibbles.
I'll not do that because I didn't find any. The only thing I'm
not sure about is Artemis' using a pure oxygen atmosphere at 20%
of Earth sea-level pressure. This works for short- and
moderate-duration space missions, and was used in the U.S.
Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. For exposure to pure
oxygen longer than two weeks, a phenomenon called absorption
atelectasis
can develop, which is the collapse of the alveoli in the lungs
due to complete absorption of the oxygen gas (see this
NASA report
[PDF]).
The presence of
a biologically inert gas such as nitrogen, helium, argon, or
neon will keep the alveoli inflated and prevent this phenomenon.
The U.S. Skylab missions used an atmosphere of 72% oxygen and
28% nitrogen to avoid this risk, and the Soviet Salyut and Mir
space stations used a mix of nitrogen and oxygen with between 21%
and 40% oxygen. The Space Shuttle and International Space Station
use sea-level atmospheric pressure with 21% oxygen and the
balance nitrogen. The effects of reduced pressure on the
boiling point of water and the fire hazard of pure oxygen even
at reduced pressure are accurately described, but I'm not sure
the physiological effects of a pure oxygen atmosphere for long-term
habitation have been worked through.

Nitpicking aside, this is a techno-thriller which is also an
engaging human story, set in a perfectly plausible and believable
future where not only the technology but the economics and
social dynamics work. We may just be welcoming another grand
master to the pantheon.